GTA To Boost Homestay Business In Darjeeling & Kalimpong With New App

The Gorkhaland Territorial Administration (GTA) unveiled a mobile app to boost business for homestay owners and other local stakeholders of the tourism industry in Darjeeling and Kalimpong hills.

According to reports, Dawa Gyalpo Sherpa, the chief coordinator of adventure tourism in the GTA, said that the objective is to see that hundreds of homestay owners, cab operators and tourist guides earn regularly by providing services to tourists in the hills.

They can get themselves registered in the newly unveiled app named ‘darjeelingkalimpongtourismapp’, he said.

Sherpa explained that over the past few years, hundreds of homestay facilities have come up across Darjeeling and Kalimpong districts. Such accommodations were promoted to provide an alternative earning opportunity to people in remote locations of the hills.

“But what we have noticed is that a section of homestay owners eventually hands over their facilities to outsiders on lease with a contract of a meagre amount. They are doing it because of an assured income but it is affecting the basic concept of homestay tourism,” he added.

The app has been launched so that the GTA has a record of the homestay facilities and the local homestay owners can get tourists through it and get decent earnings instead of providing the property to somebody else on lease.

“Once a homestay owner registers through the app, he can directly contact tourists and have steady business round the year without involving any middleman or agencies,” Sherpa mentioned.

To popularise the app, the tourism department of the GTA has started sending teams to common locations like Sittong in the Kurseong subdivision, where homestays, to inform the owners.